Club Dead

favorite, and it’s celebrated worldwide in the vamp community.)
    “Sure, if they want to pay a twenty-dollar cover charge to drink the worst drinks in five states. Served by the rudest waiters. Very slowly.”
    I tried to smother my smile. This was not a smiley kind of place. “And if they stick that out?”
    “There’s no floor show, no one speaks to them, and if they last much longer, they find themselves out on the sidewalk getting into their car with no memory of how they got there.”
    He grasped the handle of the door and pulled it open. The dread that soaked the air did not seem to affect Alcide.
    We stepped into a tiny hall that was blocked by another door after about four feet. There, again, I knew we were being watched, though I couldn’t see a camera or a peephole anywhere.
    “What’s the name of this place?” I whispered.
    “The vamp that owns it calls it Josephine’s,” he said, just as quietly. “But Weres call it Club Dead.”
    I thought about laughing, but the inner door opened just then.
    The doorman was a goblin.
    I had never seen one before, but the word “goblin” popped into my mind as if I had a supernatural dictionary printed on the inside of my eyeballs. He was very short and very cranky-looking, with a knobby face and broad hands. His eyes were full of fire and malignance. He glared up at us as if customers were the last things he needed.
    Why any ordinary person would walk into Josephine’s after the cumulative effect of the haunted sidewalk, the vanishing vehicle, and the goblin at the door . . . well, some people are just born asking to be killed, I guess.
    “Mr. Herveaux,” the goblin said slowly, in a deep, growly voice. “Good to have you back. Your companion is . . . ?”
    “Miss Stackhouse,” Alcide said. “Sookie, this is Mr. Hob.” The goblin examined me with glowing eyes. He looked faintly troubled, as if he couldn’t quite fit me into a slot; but after a second, he stood aside to let us pass.
    Josephine’s was not very crowded. Of course, it was somewhat early for its patrons. After the eerie build-up, the large room looked almost disappointingly like any other bar. The serving area itself was in the middle of the room, a large square bar with a lift-up panel for the staff to go to and fro. I wondered if the owner had been watching reruns of Cheers . The glasses hung down, suspended on racks, and there were artificial plants and low music and dim lighting. There were polished bar stools set evenly all around the square. To the left of the bar was a small dance floor, and even farther left was a tiny stage for a band or a disc jockey. On the other three sides of the square were the usual small tables, about half of which were in use.
    Then I spotted the list of ambiguous rules on the wall, rules designed to be understood by the regular habitués, but not by the occasional tourist. “No Changing on the Premises,” one said sternly. (Weres and shifters could not switch from animal to human when they were at the bar; well, I could understand that.) “No Biting of Any Kind,” said another. “No Live Snacks,” read a third. Ick.
    The vampires were scattered throughout the bar, some with others of their own kind, some with humans. There was a raucous party of shifters in the southeast corner, where several tables had been drawn together to accommodate the size of the party. The center of this group appeared to be a tall young woman with gleaming short black hair, an athletic build, and a long, narrow face. She was draped over a square man of her own age, which I guessed to be about twenty-eight. He had round eyes and a flat nose and the softest looking hair I’d ever seen—it was almost baby fine, and so light a blond, it was nearly white. I wondered if this were the engagement party, and I wondered if Alcide had known it was to take place. His attention was definitely focused on that group.
    Naturally, I immediately checked out what the other women in the bar were wearing. The female vampires and the women with male vampires were dressed about at my level. The shifter females tended to dress down a bit more. The black-haired woman I’d pegged for Debbie was wearing a gold silk blouse and skintight brown leather pants, with boots. She laughed at some comment of the blond man’s, and I felt Alcide’s arm grow rigid under my fingers. Yep, this must be the ex-girlfriend, Debbie. Her good time had certainly escalated since she’d glimpsed Alcide’s